


The Last Of Twelve Houses

by KelpietheThundergod



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s11e05 Thin Lizzie, Gen, NOT amara x dean, Season/Series 11, and for threatened autonomy, and one non-sexual but non-consensual touch, episode coda, warning for ambiguity due to manipulation, warning for non-consensual dream-walking and manipulation bordering on mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:55:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5186072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpietheThundergod/pseuds/KelpietheThundergod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don't worry, Dean. We are safe.”</p><p>His heart jumps in his throat at the words suddenly sounding to his right. He twists in his seat, freezes. Beside him in the back is a girl. Smiling at him in satisfaction, a spark that could be humor in her eyes. Her hair is long and brown, her dress a deep red. Deep red, the mark on her shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Of Twelve Houses

 

 

 

_you didn't know?_

_a hanged man finds peace under the sea_

   

 

 

 

It's so peaceful.

Dark outside, starless night. A fog has set in, it's everywhere. Strange, he can't remember when it started. Now, it's all around the car, a softly swirling mist. It's breathing against the side window he's staring out of. They're moving, the flow of air around the car making the fog swish by like gentle waves. He watches it, transfixed by how calm it makes him feel. But slowly, awareness sets in. They're moving but there's no rumble of the car. No sound from the engine, from the tires on the road. He whips his head around, a sudden flood of shock and fear making his breath catch. He's in the back, and the car is moving. There's no one in the driver's seat.

“Don't worry, Dean. We are safe.”

His heart jumps in his throat at the words suddenly sounding to his right. He twists in his seat, freezes. Beside him in the back is a girl. Smiling at him in satisfaction, a spark that could be humor in her eyes. Her hair is long and brown, her dress a deep red. Deep red, the mark on her shoulder.

“We're not really moving. You just think we are.”

Dean stares at her. Feels cold all over, despite the warmth and light inside the car.

“Amara?”

Her smiles gets wider, stretching her face.

“Hi Dean. I've missed you.”

He looks around, but nothing has changed. Outside, there's just dark and fog. No road, no street signs. The dashboard is dark, the tape deck empty.

“Am I dreaming?”

Amara shrugs, unconcerned. “You're unconscious.”

Dean frowns at her, his thoughts racing. Case, he was on a case with Sam. The creepy doily coffin, Len, Sam calling Sidney.

Amara watches him, open and wide-eyed. “It was the girl. She hit you upside the head with a gun.”

Dean inhales sharply, “Sidney? You sucked her soul out too?”

Amara shrugs again, looks out the windshield. “I gave her what she wanted. Or needed. That's the same thing anyway.”

Dean tenses. Shifts on the seat, fixes her with a stare.

“No, listen to me. It's not the same thing.”

Amara looks up at him again, unimpressed. “She was unhappy and in pain. Now she's not.” Her features then twist with pity, “You're unhappy and in pain too, Dean. Don't you want to be free from it?”

Dean stares into her eyes, the black of her pupils. Feels his chest constrict, grits out through clenched teeth, “Why're you doing this?”

Amara cants her head to the side. “Because I need to, silly. I'm hungry.” She reaches out a hand, brushes her fingertips over Dean's chest, right above his heart. He flinches, sucks in a breath. “You're hungry too, Dean.” She frowns. Her fingertips are like brands. “You deny yourself. What a strange thing to do.” She withdraws her hand, sits back to look out front again.

Dean follows her gaze, but can't make out anything but dark and fog. He can't see where they're going – except, right, apparently they're not going anywhere. He looks out the window at his left again, smoothes a hand down the car door. It feels perfectly tangible, but when he grips the door handle it comes away under his touch. He stares at it where it lies in the palm of his hand, fear closing up his throat. He didn't even pull at it, and it didn't break off. Like it wasn't connected to the door at all.

“You know, it's really silly how you humans think you can read your destiny in the stars,” Amara muses beside him, sighing. “All those made-up and meaningless constellations and signs, the rotation of this planet that you can't even feel – why would you call the last one the house of self-undoing if you can just call it a prison? When that's what it is. When that's where I _was_.”

Her tone has shifted from bemused to bitter and angry, fingers curling over the edge of the seat. “He had no right to bind me. _No_ right to take my control, to split me apart.” Her head whips around to Dean, eyes blazing, her mouth twisted into a snarl. “Don't you agree?” She doesn't wait for a reply, blows out a frustrated breath. She stares out the windshield again, eyes dark and hard and determined. “They did the same thing to you. I won't let that happen again.”

Dean stares at her, swallows with a clicking sound. He feels constricted in here, Amara's words like a crushing weight dropped on his shoulders. And yet, something else inside him feels comforted by what she said. Comforted that she knows, that she will keep him _safe_.

He sucks in a shuddering breath, squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, tries to push through the confusion and the apathy, “No!” Curls his fingers around the door handle still clutched in one hand; it feels solid but too warm, _alive_. He almost wants to hurl it away from himself, but instead holds on tighter, repeats frantically, to himself, “No!”

Cold washes over him, making him shiver. His eyes fly open again only to see Amara watching him with pity. Her face is still in sharp focus but around her the light has dimmed, shapes blurring together and dark eating away at the corners of Dean's vision. “You're waking up,” she's saying, voice sounding hollow and far away. “You probably won't remember. But it's okay, I'll see you soon!”

And then her voice is gone but the darkness stays.

>

Sidney has stars below her shoulders.

She doesn't seem concerned by anything, not even the gun in her hand or the corpses a few feet away. Her expression is serene, her demeanor unpredictable. Dean tries to keep her attention on him, away from Sam who is almost free of his restraints while Dean's are still biting into his wrists. Sidney is saying, towering over him, “She lightened something inside of me.”

Dean's head is pounding in pain. He doesn't let it show. Sidney's voice is calm and clear. She lays her story out before them, presents the marks on her skin. Cuts herself open to the deepest and darkest parts of her missing soul, and doesn't seem to feel pained by it at all. Dean has to fight to keep his expression neutral, to not flinch away when Sidney speaks of sadness, of voices in her head.

Dread pools in his guts and a hollow feeling spreads through his chest when Sidney says, her tone dreamlike but free of doubt, “She hasn't left me.”

>

It feels good to drive, afterwards.

It's still light outside, the streets are busy. Inside the car it's quiet though, Sam thumbing through something on his phone, Dean not having put on any music yet. Len's and Sidney's words are still echoing in his mind, and every time he thinks about reaching for his tapes, something stops him. _Going through the motions_. _I know she can hear me_. He knows each of these tapes by heart; they're familiar, a comfort. A part of him. A part of himself he knows.

The backseat is spotless again and empty, where just a few weeks ago he was lying cuffed and trapped.

They drive past houses. Towards the main road. Home. He listens to the rumble of the car, the wind outside. Tries to let it stitch over the pain, the uncertainty. Tries to ignore the hollow feeling that still lingers, and grips the steering wheel tighter. Grounding himself in his choice to move, here and now.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
